...two adults, two kids, and all their stuff wandering the world. (Plus two in college.)

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Getting in our steps

Ian is out this week doing what we lovingly call "Crash Bang." It has some official title but "Crash Bang" is way cooler. He learned how to strap on tourniquets, crash cars, avoid getting shot... you know, the important stuff when traveling around the world to all the fun spots.

So that left the rest of us without a car, which means we've been doing a lot of walking. And walking = steps. Lots of steps. My legs and feet hurt. And the sweat, so much sweat, I better be oozing out so many toxins...

10 July-13,591 Ian and Jonathon went off to their respective camps, and we wandered the neighborhood and over to the Marine Corps Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

11 July-10,477 We went to Roosevelt Island on Monday, you saw that.

12 July-16,260 Tuesday we went to Georgetown to walk around M Street and along the Potomac. Gotta love the hiking trails all over, especially the ones by the canal.

You know it...

When everyone is moving and you try to catch 'em all.

Nicholas should probably wear pants.

Katherine joined us for dinner at Il Radicchio. There has been a lot of Pokemon Go hunting as well. Nicholas goes out several times a day to get in his distance to hatch new ones, and to capture ones popping up in parks and... yeah, I'm even boring myself, sorry. But he's having fun and off the laptop, so it's all good.

13 July-13,982 Wednesday we walked to Ballston to meet up with Katherine, see a movie, walk the hockey summer camp, and get some cooler exercise in at Kettler Iceplex. We ate at Chipotle. I. Don't. Like. Mexican. Food.

Dorks.

14 July-11,821 Today Becca and I walked through Rosslyn, across the Key Bridge, through Georgetown, and to the Kennedy Center.

Bright red after an hour walk in 99F. Awesome.

The show was great. I find one of the best parts is reading the Playbill to see where they all came from, the tiny glance into the stories behind the actors. The stage for this traveling show is pretty awesome, with bits of "glass" (clear gel bits) showering down with the chandelier crash, pyrotechnics and all. At one point I recall thinking "fire on stage, that's pretty bold." Since our "Christine" played by Julia Udine didn't finish our show after Act II Scene 6, and it appeared that one of the fire bursts may have caught her, fire may not be a good thing on stage. Her understudy stepped in and we didn't see Udine at curtain call, so... here's hoping that she is fine.

Remember how I said that everyone is either in the DC area or coming through the DC area? A friend of ours from our time in the Philippines posted a photo of her family at today's matinee. It's been 13 years since I've seen her, and her daughter and my boys were in PreK together at AmeriKids. Ian will be meeting with her husband next week during consultations. Yeah, small world but especially small in the DC Metro area.

Ian returns tomorrow, it'll be nice to have him back! I've made no plans for the weekend, so here's hoping he has some ideas!

So I was thinking about the movies we've seen on this vacation. "Free State of Jones" was pretty good. Based on a true story, I want to read a book on it to get more of the real background. "Finding Dory" was very cute, yet as much as I wanted to love it, it did feel a bit of a "Finding Nemo" repeat. "Secret Life of Pets" I really wanted to like, and it too was cute, but... eh. I'm looking forward to "Storks" and of course "Star Trek: Beyond," "Rogue One," and "Miss Peregrine." I might even see "Nerve" and "Bad Moms."

Books I've read this year have varied between a lot of YA and some longer novels. If you enjoy SciFi, I recommend the Red Rising trilogy by Brown, and don't recommend Seveneves by Stephenson. If you like dystopian future with vampire... things... I recommend The Passage trilogy by Cronin. I do not recommend The Maltese Falcon, sorry classic noir fans. Now I'm on to The Man in the High Castle by Dick, and since I've seen the first season (thank you Amazon!) I'm glad to get into the details and backgrounds.

It's really time for a non-fiction book and I think the Hamilton biography by Chernow fits the bill.

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The GlobeHoppers

For those wondering, Germany is 6 hours ahead of EDT.

We're a Foreign Service family currently posted to Frankfurt, Germany after having spent 2 years in Manila, Philippines, 1 year in Lome', Togo (no, not Tonga), 3 years in Chennai, India, 3 years in Virginia, and 4 years in Amman, Jordan. We'll spend 3 years in Germany to graduate the boys from high school, and our next post is TBD 2019!

I am a former Army brat (lived in Belgium, Zaire, Algeria, Niger, visited too many places to list), now Foreign Service spouse. I tag along where ever Ian takes us and try to keep the family sane. Between 1996 when we got married and 2003 when we moved to Manila we lived in Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and Florida, and visited several other states.

Rebecca traveled to Oman with chorus (2013), Ethiopia with Week Without Walls (WWW) 2014, Qatar with swimming (2014) and volleyball (2015), and Kuwait with basketball (2016).

Rebecca and Nicholas traveled through Vietnam on WWW 2015 and Thailand for WWW 2016.

Katherine went to Kuwait with volleyball (2014) and France with WWW 2014, and did a semester abroad in Cork, Ireland in 2016. She's headed to Dublin for her internship summer 2017.

Jonathon went to Kuwait with Academic Games (2015) and had a school trip to Berlin in 2016.

Ian has also been to Ethiopia (2006), Benin (2006), South Korea (2004), Liberia (2016), Central African Republic (2016), Cameroon (2016), Algeria (2017), Morocco (2017), Tunisia (2017), and Turkmenistan (2017). He also covers Sanaa and Tripoli (no travel there), Copenhagen and Accra. Ian aided after the Mumbai Massacre (2008), and also went to Bangalore and Hyderabad in India. A life goal for him is to serve in Russia or Canada, or really any place that has a decent hockey scene. He's happy that Frankfurt has the local Loewen team!